Danse macabre: the illustrated version

Being old, bald, and fat, I don’t get a lot of admiring glances when I ride the train to work in the mornings. I do, however, get a lot of funny looks when I pull out a book to read. The reason: I’m fond of reading French literature, but I tend to read it in the sorts of annotated versions of a work that you would read if you were a middle-school student in France (collégien in French, I think–roughly 7th and 8th grades in the American system). For me, they’re perfect–they have definitions in simple French of the kinds of words that the editors think will be difficult for a French child, which as a non-native speaker, I have trouble with myself. (Think back to the footnoted versions of Shakespeare that you read in high school and college.) If this kind of thing interests you, you can find them used by the score (see this post for an explanation of what by the score means) in boxes in front of the Boulinier bookstore on boulevard Saint Michel in the Quartier Latin. They’re so cheap–typically one euro–that there’s no reason not to by multiple versions of a play that you’re planning to see. (17th-century French theater is actually probably more intelligible than Shakespeare is in English, although as is the case with Shakespeare, it’s a good idea to read a play before you go see it.) I find it interesting to see the contrast between the sorts of things that one would (not) dare to teach middle-school students in the US and the sorts of things that one can teach middle-school children in France–definitely edgier in France.

In honor of National Poetry Month, here’s some Baudelaire, from Les fleurs du mal. Baudelaire popularized poetry about cities, as opposed to nature, glorified ad nauseum by Romanticism. In his delightful book The flâneur, Edmund White describes him as “the great apostle of dandyism,” which explains a lot about the picture of him that you see below. Odd 6-degrees-of-separation stuff: he went to high school across the street from the university where my grandfather would later study.

dandy: in Baudelaire, this is a compliment, as you might guess from this painting of him by Emile Deroy from 1844. Picture source: Wikipedia.

se pâmer: to faint; to swoon, either literally or in a state of strong emotion, whether good (with synonyms délirer, exulter, se griser, s’émerveiller, s’enthousiasmer, s’exalter, s’extasier) or bad (elle s’est pâmée de douleur).

Like this:

17 thoughts on “Danse macabre: the illustrated version”

Thank you for paying a tribute to French poetry . I must say that the by far best known Baudelaire’s photo is this one : “https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Baudelaire” . Photos of his youth are not that common, his decadency more, understandably through his “spleen” .
Maybe you don’t know that Baudelaire translated Edgard Allan Poe . As he was a great artist his translation is a masterpiece . Nerval, Rimbaud, Baudelaire were fans of Poe . Without being promoted by this illustrious avant-garde, Poe would have become famous only later, or never .

I’m not sure here “branle” refers to this old forgotten dance . “Un branle” is an ample oscillation, for a church bell for instance, and became a synonym for an action that starts a heavy, important or widely spread operation . When a warship is attacked the order is shouted this way “Branle-bas de combat !” Here it might suit Charlie’s idea better, even though the poem is called “Dance” .
Wagging one’s head is also “branler le chef” in educated French ( chef is a literary term for head) .
You might have heard “branle” in its modern slang sense : masturbating . It is used figuratively in “Qu’est-ce que tu branles ?” (What the f… are you doing ?) and the n°1 hit ” J’en ai rien à branler” (I don’t give a shit) .
A sadly funny thing is the reaction of our illiterate youth of now when by accident they meet someone who already saw a book and they hear “Branler le chef” .

I didn’t know that about Poe–thanks. I also didn’t know that there were so many uses for “branler.” It’s the modern slang sense of the word that gets you to the bizarre YouTube videos, as you can imagine.

In the naval sense, what does the “bas” in “branle-bas de combat” mean? (In the US Navy, by the way, it’s “general quarters, general quarters”–you always hear “battle stations” in the movies, but I have heard that exactly never in real life.)

I had to search . Imagine that “un branle”also meant a hammock, probably from the swinging movement . I never knew this forgotten meaning . So “branle-bas de combat” is “Unhook (all) hammocks to make room for combat” .

Now there are no more sailing ships but this expression is used to mean suddenly a whole group is speeding to prepare things, even in a funny way . “Aussitôt ce fut un branle-bas général dans la cuisine, tous les enfants se mirent au travail” .

You’ll hear “branle” more often in the phrase “mettre en branle”. Always for something heavy (les ouvriers commencent à mettre en branle l’énorme machine) or with large consequences (l’équipe de Trump met en branle une campagne de désinformation nationale) . I know you like Trump so you can change the name .

And of course a very common pejorative slang term “un branleur”, originally a wanker and now a time waster, not working or working badly, or a young lad full of ignorance, undeserved pride, agressive, this kind of things . This one is highly frequent, you’ve probably heard it several times without noticing .

It is a stroke of genius to use annotated middle school versions of books rather than the originals. I am known at the children’s library here in Grenoble already – I joined the library of Grenoble as soon as I arrived and so far have only frequented the mountain library and the children’s. These two lovely places fulfil all I need. Which is not to get bogged down in books that I struggle with so I am very happy to read as a 12 year old for now! It’s progress … when I arrived I was taking out books intended for 8-9 year olds!

You’re making progress, then! 🙂 I often buy children’s books on mildly scientific topics–anatomy, plants, stuff like that. They usually have great pictures and about the right amount of the vocabulary that I’m looking for.

Slowly slowly catchy monkey …. or alternatively petits pas a petits pas – either way I’m getting there! I love children’s reference books … I don’t get totally overwhelmed by having to decipher language that is baffling but equally if I choose carefully I am slowly stretching my boundaries